Level 12 (RAID) - The Titan Awakes

How to wreck the Warforged Titan beyond repair.
by Rice Pipeweed of Adar

This guide will focus specifically on the Warforged Titan raid encounter. I dont plan on detailing the Twilight Forge dungeon, but purely the 'Twilight Forge Core'. My small guild and I on Adar have spent many months perfecting this, we run it on average 4-5 times a week and very rarely with a party above 4 people.

Party make-up:

Really, it doesn't matter. I've beaten it with a group of 2 fighters and I've beaten it with a nearly full multi-guild group.

Clerics - If you're the type of player who won't even venture into Waterworks without a dedicated cleric, then you will definately want to have at least one with you. If you are experienced enough where you regularly don't need a cleric watching over you, then you surely won't need one here as well. Ideally, every character in the group should be able to heal themselves. Potions, Wands and Heal scrolls will be your best friend here as you WILL take damage, and likely lots of it. If you have more than 140 HP, It will be hard for the Titan to take you out in one shot. If the majority of your group cannot self-heal then Clerics are a definate must.

Fighters/Barbarians - Argueably the least effective of the classes in this raid, primarily because the encounter does not revolve around high DPS, combined with their inablity to self-heal rapidly. The advantage of these classes here would be their high hit-points to soak up a few hits, which makes them good pillar droppers. High AC will not help you avoid the Titan's melee attacks unless you are in the 60+ range.

Paladins - Always good to have here. Make sure you have Deathward memorized and a UMD high enough to use Heal/Raise Dead scrolls specially if you are lacking a cleric.

Rangers - In my opinion, the right ranger will be the saving grace of your group. Range attacks are very important here. They can also self-heal fairly reliably (alternating wands/potions), and can cast Freedom of Movement.

Wizards/Sorcerers - The primary responsibility of casters here will be damaging the Titan on the first and last 20% of his health. During the pillar/laser portion of the quest, concentrate on removing the Ancient Warforged from the ground floor, and keeping the pillar dropper hasted.

Rogues/Bards - As there are no traps in the encounter, these classes can take up the role of healer (Assuming UMD), And make excellent crystal-runners with proper buffs as a sneaky type can move into Warforged Room 1 and take a crystal without breaking stealth and stirring up the Ancient Warforged.

Spells to bring with you:

Freedom of Movement - This spell is important to avoid the Hold Person effect of the 'laser-strings' attuned to the crystal carrier.
Deathward - This spell is nice to have to avoid the Inflict Critical Wounds effect of the 'laser-strings' attuned to the crystal carrier.
Haste - A hasted character (with 20%+ striding) can outrun the Titan and strafe out of the way of his cannon.
Resist Energy: 20 points of lightning resistance will negate the lightning balls traversing the catwalks. Ancient Warforged do frost/acid damage on their melee attacks.
MM/Scorching Ray - Direct Damage to the Titan.

Dungeon Layout:

There are six primary areas to the instance.

1) Ground Floor. The floor you are on when you enter the instance. Anyone on this floor is vulnerable to the Titan's melee attacks so you want to be here as little as possible. If you are not dropping the pillar bottoms or sporting a 60+ AC you probably want to be somewhere else.

2) Laser Control Deck. Directly above the zone-in area. Contains the Crystal Assimilator and the Laser Control Panel. Accessed from the ladder to the west of the zone-in, or from jumping down from the catwalks.

3) Warforged Room 1. The room directly behind the Titan's starting position. This room contains the first Crystal Generator, and three machines that create/spawn Ancient Warforged. Players in here that are against the south wall can take melee damage from the titan.

4) The Shelf. AKA second floor. Accessed by climbing a pair of ladders on the east side of the room.

5) The Catwalks. AKA third floor. This is the grid on the very top of the dungeon. After the second laser hit on the titan, this area becomes electrified with travelling lightning orbs. Accessed from the Northwest side of the Shelf (run the whole way around) only after the Titan is activated.

6) Warforged Room 2. Accessed from the catwalks and containing the second Crystal Generator. Accessible only after the second successful laser hit.

The Basics:

Of course your primary and only goal in the encounter is to wreck the Warforged Titan. There are 3 parts to doing this. Once the Titan initially becomes active, he is vulnerable to all melee, ranged and spell attacks. You will want to damage him down 20% of his total health until you get the DM text, "Protective shields spring up around the Titan's upper torso!". Getting this message means you can no longer use traditional methods to damage him and must now knock him over with the pillars, then fire the laser directly on top of him. Once you have done that 6 times with 6 different pillars, you will get a DM text stating that his shields have come down. At this point, he will have the last 20% of his health remaining and will again become vulnerable to normal attacks/spells and you will be able to kill him off.

The Pillars:

There are 8 pillars to use in the encounter. For a succesful win, you'll need to land 6 pillars on him, followed by 6 successful laser shots. Which means if you lose more than 2 pillars, its time to recall as he can no longer be tripped/cometfalled/greased. The pillars do not become damageable until the titan is activated, so you can't setup the pillars ahead of time. You'll have to do it under fire.

There are 2 parts to every pillar, a top and bottom. These both have independent health bars and in order to knock a pillar down you will need to destroy both portions. If the bottom pillar is destroyed while the top is still intact, the pillar will remain standing. If this happens, the bottom pillar will fall in the direction of the last successful hit (not necessarily the killing blow) at the time the top portion is destroyed. Hitting a dead bottom pillar from a different angle while it's top is intact, will change the direction of it's fall. Due to the dungeon design, all pillars will need to be dropped diagonally onto the laser's target. If a pillar was to fall on top of you, be prepared to take a huge amount of damage. Standing too close to a falling pillar even if you're on the opposite side of it's path will act as if it fell on top of you so be sure to stand a couple feet back when you drop it.

The direction a pillar will fall is outward from your position. If you are attacking a pillar and facing north, it will fall north as if you were to push it over from one side.

Each pillar half is technically an immobile mob. This means that they cannot be hit by other mob's attacks (e.g. the Titan or Ancient Warforged), or by other pillars. Their type is 'Construct' so construct bane weapons work well here, and they cannot be critically hit. They do not have any damage reduction so any weapon will work. The only way to damage them is with melee and ranged, so spells will be totally ineffective against them. Also, make sure nobody in your party summons any pets as they will go after the pillars as if they were mobs, and cause you to shamefully fail. This goes for Charm as well. You don't want to be that wizard. Using a two-handed weapon is also not advised, because if you hit with a glancing blow on the killing hit, you will not be able to control it's direction.

The Laser:

Upon entering the encounter, you will notice a bright red dot in the north center of the room. The red dot initially looks like an arrow pointing to the West, but ignore that fact, it doesn't mean anything. Directly above this red dot is a large conical red and black device attached to the underside of the catwalks. This is the laser. When fired, it will fire directly down onto the red dot.

Before you can move or fire the laser, you will need a power crystal. To obtain a crystal, you will need to double click on a Crystal Generator. There are 2 of these in the encounter. The first generator is in Warforged Room 1 on the bottom floor, and the other is in Warforged Room 2 and accessed through the catwalks after the second successful Titan hit. Therefore, only the Crystal Generator in Warforged Room 1 is accessible at the start of the encounter. For now, your party can only have one crystal at a time. Also there is no definite amount of time that you can hold a crystal for, it does not expire as long as it is not inside the Assimilator.

Once you are carrying a crystal, you will need to bring it to the Laser Control Deck. At this point you will notice that anybody carrying a crystal will be bombarded by tiny 'laser strings' coming from the small round objects on the walls, and the underside of the catwalks. If you are on top of the catwalks while carrying a crystal, this effect will not happen. These 'laser strings' have three effects. Anyone hit by them, whether carrying a crystal or not will randomly have to save versus Hold Person/Slow, or Inflict Critical Wounds. Because of this, anyone planning on carrying a crystal, or being near a crystal carrier will need to have both Deathward and Freedom of Movement on them. The third effect that the 'laser strings' have are to slowly heal any Ancient Warforged they come in contact with. It's our theory that this comes into play on the Titan himself as well, and is the reason that the Titan will sometimes take 7 successful hits to bring his shields down instead of 6. If you are carrying a crystal to the deck, do your best to steer clear from the big guy. Also note that while you are on the laser control deck, you are still completely vulnerable to his cannon and melee attacks just as if you were on the ground next to him.

There are times when the crystal carrier may no longer want to have the crystal, such as switching out a laser operator due to aggro situations, or maybe someone is bringing a crystal to the deck for the operator, or if your freedom of movement spell expires, etc. If you drag the crystal from your inventory onto the screen as if you were going to destroy it, it will drop to your feet and will be available for anyone else to pick up. Gravity does not effect it, so don't drop it mid-air or try to drop it down from the catwalks.

There are 15 different positions that the laser can be in, as designated in the crude chart below. To move the laser around the underside of the catwalks, you will need to place a crystal in the Crystal Assimilator. This is the large round object that takes up 2/3rds of the control deck. The assimilator will turn an orange color and the entire party will receive the DM text, "The Crystal Assimilator blazes with fresh power!". At this point, double-clicking the directional arrows on the laser control panel will allow you to move the laser one step at a time. You can make as many moves as you have time to, and also fire the laser during the duration that the laser is powered up. In it's default position, you are able to knock 4 different pillars diagonally onto the red dot. Because of this, its a good place to start since you wont have use your first crystal to move it.


x--x--x
..o..o..
x--x--x
..o..o..
x--x--x
..o..o..
x--1--x
..o..o..
x--x--x

x = possible laser position
o = pillar
1 = default laser position

The time that you have to fire the laser, from the time that the assimilator is powered up is about one minute. You will need to drop the pillar on the Titan, then double-click on the large round button located in the middle of the directional arrows to fire. You can have as many attempts at firing the laser as you want, you are not limited to 8 shots. Any player hit by the laser will take a substantial amount of damage.


Titan Aggro Management:

I want to take a minute to talk about the Titan's aggro. This is the most challenging part of the encounter, and if you can learn the Titan's aggro behavior then you can master this, and therefore master the quest. Pre Mod-4, The Titan had completley random aggro. It was random on who he aggroed, and how long that person would hold his aggro. Usually he would switch targets every few seconds and could become very difficult to control, especially with a large party. Since the new AI update, the big guy will now lock onto one party member, and that person will hold his aggro for an extended amount of time, or until that person dies, whichever comes first. With a smaller party its pretty simple to tell who he has targetted since he will be on that person like peanut butter on jelly. If he follows you around the instance, swinging his fists and shooting multiple cannon shots directly at you, then you've probably got aggro. When the Titan fires his cannon, he will shoot a barrage of 4-5 blasts at his target, and then 1 individual blast at a couple random people. If you are the target of 4-5 cannon shots at the same time, and nobody is near you, then it's pretty safe to say you have aggro. Any party member who comes within striking distance, however, will be the victim of his hammer/melee attack. After he recovers from the melee attack, he will continue on attacking his previous targetted player. If you are the designated pillar dropper, or laser operator and also the one with aggro, then you will probably want to give your position to somebody else until his aggro changes off you. A good way to establish who has aggro is to spread your party out along the shelf and see which one he goes to since he will try to move into melee range with that person.